Astronomical League Messier Certificate for Imaging

[JonCarleton]

I started imaging the Messier List a few years ago with the goal of submitting my images for a certificate from the Astronomical League.  Alas, at that time, they only certificated visual astronomy.  I was not pleased, as I am not able to view with an eyepiece owing to too many years behind computer terminals, age and general entropy.

The restriction has, earlier this year, been altered.  Now there is an astro-imaging certification from the Astronomical League for the Messier objects.  With that, I am off to the races once again.  As of this posting, I am about half of the way complete.  I did not start at an opportune point in the year and many of my "un-imaged" targets are either too low on the horizon or on the other side of the planet at night.  Hopefully, I will finish sometime before the end of the year.  Granted, with the "Astronomical League Certificate for Messier Imaging" and a nickle, you still only have 5 cents, but it is something I want to do.

This link https://www.astroleague.org/imaging-messier-observing-program/ is the Astronomical League information page for imaging (and also has links within for the visual page), should you be interested in the program.

This link https://linuxastro.com/messier.shtml is a page I setup that shows my progress.  I update images as I collect them, though as of this post the site will be a bit static until the earth moves a bit.  The images on this link are only intended to prove I was able to acquire the target and frequently therefore are not of great quality.   Some of the bright objects, for example, comprise of as little as 10 minutes of data.

It is an interesting exercise and did introduce me to several targets that I plan in future to go back to and collect enough data for a proper image.  I was also not aware there were so very many different globular clusters around our galaxy.